HOW THE RECENT META BAN WAVE HAS IMPACTED YOUR AD CAMPAIGNS

What is this?

Since the start of August, we have been seeing a large number of Facebook pages being hit with restrictions preventing them from advertising. Thankfully, this does not affect any of the page’s organic posting or capabilities; however, it hinders our ability to fulfill the digital advertising fulfillment services effectively. We have not seen page restrictions like this for years on pages on which we runs ad. As such, it is bizarre for us to see nearly a dozen pages get restricted in the last month. 

What’s changing?

Our specialists have informed us through their industry research that a ban wave is also being experienced by large and small advertisers across the Meta platform. These ban waves tend to happen when Meta has made some backend change in how their automated system is flagging assets. Typically these assessments are overly aggressive at first and are adjusted over time on Meta’s end to catch bad actors only and more precisely.

Based on our team’s findings, we are not seeing the ads on the accounts getting flagged prior to the page’s restrictions, nor are we seeing any clear ad policy violations in the ads whose pages are being restricted. It is important to note that Meta will never tell us why a page has been restricted or whether it was in fact an ad that caused the restriction. This is to prevent bad actors from finding ways around their automated systems; however, they will provide a list of all the possible reasons a page might be restricted.

How does it impact you?

In the instances we have seen so far, our team has filed appeals and continue to follow up with Meta support until we get a resolution. Unfortunately, we have not yet seen any restricted pages be reactivated by Meta. This may be due to the fact that during these ban waves, the internal Meta review team is hit by in turn a huge wave of review requests. This slows down turn around time and, in our experience, the quality of the review advertisers receive.

It is also important to note that Meta places a strict wall between the support people advertisers can talk to and the team who does the reviews. This reduces our ability to affect the investigation as we can never speak to the internal review team directly. This also means that it is impossible to determine if a human has ever actually done your review or if it has again been handled by their automated system (as many current and former Meta employees claim).

We plan to continue advocating on behalf of all of our Partners, even when the first appeal is rejected. It is important to recognize that it is more likely that, regardless of the legitimacy of the restriction, Meta may not re-review or lift the restriction. It is possible that Meta support may be more helpful when the ban wave dies down, but this is not guaranteed.

For those affected by the ban wave, we are recommending either shifting your advertising budget to different platforms in the meantime or creating a new FB page purely for running advertisements. We also suggest limiting changes to ads until the ban wave dies down. This is to avoid causing any further triggers to the automated system reviewing ads that are currently live.

We apologize for the inconvenience and understand the frustration around Meta’s lack of transparency. If you have any questions, concerns, or would like to discuss this change further, please don’t hesitate to reach out to our Support team